In my role at my job, I’m often theorizing, laying foundation, and teaching. But every once in a while, customer-facing disasters happen. Then I have to engage in what my boss lovingly refers to as “firefighting”. I’m probably slipping into that mode sympathetically while observing this, kind of like how a husband can have sympathy pains for his pregnant wife.
So, while booting up Microsoft FingerPoint and shooting for the high score can be fun, part of me is clearly drawn away from assigning blame and toward trying to work a problem even though it’s not my responsibility to work it. Since managers are the kings of saying “just throw more hardware at it” or “flip a switch”, I may be unconsciously motivated in answering all these people because I’m often required to answer others similarly lacking technical knowledge in similar situations.
The most important thing we can do right now is to help Blizzard extinguish the flames. Then we can put the ashes through some chemical analyses to determine how the fire started. The way I see it, so far they’ve said that using transient FCM (with recklessly flailing availibility) is the way they’d prefer to solve the problem. For some players, this is okay. For others, it definitely is not:
As far as putting out the fire goes, I guess we just have to watch how successful Blizzard is with FCM and be open to any other suggestions they happen to proffer on what we can do to help. I hope they’re hearing those of us that cannot accept their current approach and trying to come up with other ideas. When I heard their claims about the capabilities of technology in general, it sounded to me like they (or at least some contingent there) thought they could just put their fingers in their ears and look the other way confident in the knowledge that the players made their bed and have to sleep in it. I decided to post this thread to let them know they won’t be able to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.